Wednesday, April 6, 2011

A Look at a Mechanic Lien

You’ve heard of a written estimate and an order repair, but are you familiar with a mechanic lien? This is often a part of the repair order, but not many car owners and drivers pay attention to this when they sign any document upon bringing their car to an auto repair shop.

But what is it, really? And what is its purpose? Well, a mechanic lien is a form of a legal document that gives mechanics and auto repair shops the guarantee that their customers will pay the due repair amount. The lien states that the mechanic or shop has the right to keep the car in case the customer fails to render the proper payment. This means the customer cannot bring the car home until the time he pays his debts to the shop. In other instances, he may be forced to sell the car just to pay the amount he owes to the shop or mechanic.

Filing of a mechanic lien is done in court, and this will entail money as the customer may also be asked to pay for the legal fees incurred in the process. Other than this additional payment, the customer may also have to pay for the car’s storage fee (to be discussed in the next article), so he’d have a lot more amount to think about at the end of it all.

Today, the term “mechanic lien” is also used in many other properties other than vehicles. It works the same, and its purpose is similar. If you happen to have brought your car to a shop and the shop places a mechanic lien on it after the repair because of certain reasons, there are some things that you can do to remove the lien—watch out for the next two articles for more discussion on this.